Microsoft Exchange on Mac Server - Available? (Newbie-ish)

Hi there,

If I want to install entourage into are Mac only network, to use it fully do
I then have to introduce a Windows server to run exchange?
Is exchange only available on Windows or can it run on a Mac Server.
If it is not available, what is the equivalent software product for the Mac.

Thanks in advance.

Kind regards

Dave.

 

First off, if you insist on running Exchange, you won't have a Mac-only
network any longer. You'll most likely have to hire someone to care and
feed the mailserver and another person to back them up as they won't
want to be on-call 7x24x365. email service is typically thought of as a
mission-critical application in companies these days.

If you continue using the MacOS X MTA (sendmail), you won't have these
problems for the most part. It will just run, barring the idiots in
marketing sending out 5MB Powerpoint presentations to everyone in the
company and filling your mail spool. You have a Mac-only network with
existing mail server technology that's been around for decades and there
are an army of people around who fix bugs and exploits for it as soon as
they're discovered. Are you intentionally trying to hit your thumb with
a hammer or shoot a toe off?

Isn't Entourage an email client? Why would it care what email server it
talks with? If it has some sort of preference for M$ products, why
bother running it at all?

If some PHB is pushing this, why not arrange for that person to have an
"accident" and problem solved. I see no technological reason for
switching. It must be political. Take that politician out and shoot
them. It will keep the others honest.

 

If you use Entourage only for e-mail, you would be correct.

The fact that Dave wants to run Exchange in the first place indicates
that he probably wants to do more. And then Entourage has some use.

 

Dave,

As has been pointed out by others in this thread, Exchange Server runs
only on Windows and has some other prerequisites (most notably, Active
Directory) that make implementing Exchange a bit more complicated than
perhaps some would like.

If all you see is basic e-mail connectivity, then there are a plethora
of Internet standards-based applications to provide it--Postfix for
SMTP, Cyrus or Dovecot for IMAP (and POP, I believe--don't use POP that
much so I'm not sure), etc. Most, if not all, of these applications
are open source and available to you at little or no cost. They
typically run on Linux, and if you aren't experienced that's the
easiest way to go. I find that Mac OS X, with its BSD/Unix core, fits
very well with Linux-based servers. Of course, YMMV.

In addition, there are numerous Linux/Unix-based groupware servers that
not only offer e-mail but can also offer some of the "extras" that a
native Exchange client (which, BTW, Entourage is NOT) also gets. Try a
Google search; you'll find plenty of matches. One product that
immediately springs to mind include CommuniGate Pro, but I'm sure there
are plenty of others. Although I haven't looked extensively, I'm sure
you could find equivalent products that will run natively on your Mac
OS X Server machine as well.

HTH.

 

Yeah, right.

To say that Entourage is useless as a standard email client is really
doing Entourage a sisservice. The truth is Entourage has *plenty* of
standard, non-Exchange features that no other Mac mail client can
currently match. Entourage runs circles around Mail in many, many
ways; but you'd only know that if you actually used both of those
applications for a few weeks. ; )

 

Boredom?

Actually I hadn't really noticed the date. Guess I'll have to be more careful!

 

I found entourage too difficult to set up for AOl imap so I have dropped it
and usenet was a place in siberia

so I use good old mozilla mail for usenet

Entouarge seems to be designed for group work in schools

as I write I have WinXp running on Parellel using the latest MS stuff
aand the latest Windows Live Messenger 8.0

I will never use MS products on the mac again
bye bye mactopia

sincerely



Hugh W

--

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